


a vessel for his rage

by KDblack



Category: DC Animated Universe, DCU, Justice League - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Blood, Burning, Demon/Human Relationships, M/M, but no real timeline, loosely inspired by Justice League Dark and faded memories of the original 'The Demon' series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2018-11-01 14:20:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10923591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KDblack/pseuds/KDblack
Summary: Merlin must have known what hell he'd condemned Jason to. No one could be so cruel by accident.





	1. nightmare

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CAPSING](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CAPSING/gifts).



> After years of shipping this awful couple quietly in the background, I stumbled across someone who had actually written it. Thank you, CAPSING. Everyone, go check out their fic, it's much better than this silly collection of incoherent drabbles.
> 
> Still here? Fine. Enjoy your regularly scheduled and thoroughly non-canon backstory, character exploration, and bad rhymes.

The nightmare begins with heat, and the smell of blood. Then comes the sensation of his body. The weight of armour, a mantle, a sword at his side. Flesh. Beneath it, fire, and movement. He floats in a haze of numbness, staring blindly ahead as his body carries him forward. There's no urgency to the gait. It's far too late to change anything. All he can do is keep moving with the quiet, too-even steps of an automaton, a puppet, a clockwork doll, indifferent to the inferno clawing at his bones.

Each step, another chunk of boot melts away. His clothing shrivels where it touches his skin. His chainmail has begun to smoke. His helmet is gone – taken, thrown away, incinerated – and stray hair falls into his face, red like cinders, white like ash. 

The thing inside him kicks and writhes, screaming _oathbreaker, liar, you can't fight fire with fire!_

Its rage sets his eyeballs quivering in their sockets. 

He walks on. Behind him, Camelot burns.


	2. first

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did warn you about the rhymes.

The first century is the hardest. Jason stumbles through it like a sleepwalker. Unlearning the habits of a lifetime is not an easy task, even with the demon constantly exuding rage and bloodthirst as a motivator. Food is the easiest to do without; any soldier worth the title has experience with hunger. Sleep is harder to let go of, but he has no choice. The first time he lets his eyes droop shut and wakes in the burnt ruin of a town is the last. 

It is not, however, the last town he burns.

Once upon a time, he had a temper. Now, he cannot have one. Every drop of anger is a weapon the demon can use against him. It prowls through the long corridors of his veins and rattles at his bones, whispering all the hideous things it will do to him when it's freed: 

_pull back the ribs and sever the spine, stab the eyes and twist the screw, spill blood that dares to mingle with mine, pluck out the heart and feed it to you._

Listening, Jason understands why Merlin broke his promise. Etrigan the demon is a monster. He will give anything – do anything – to undo this curse, even if it means his death. Anything to escape this unlife, wandering from one disaster to the next, never knowing when the demon will rise again.


	3. silence

Jason has never thought of himself as a social person until he tries the hermit lifestyle on for size. It seems like a good idea at the time: just remove himself from civilization entirely, go somewhere the demon's wrath can't touch anyone else. It even works. The problem is that he vastly overestimates his own ability to withstand isolation. Etrigan hardly has to lift a finger as Jason drives himself mad. He stews helplessly, wallowing in his own misery until he can take no more. He fails. Gives in. Returns.

The demon's laughter when he does is genuine, which makes it hurt all the worse.

He tries again, later, with new resolve and phantom blood hot on his hands. It goes no better. Loneliness dogs his steps, a demon more insidious than the one that burns within him. He cannot be near people, for fear of losing control. He cannot be away from people, for fear of losing his soul. Even Etrigan takes pity on him, his whispers soft and almost comforting.

_Silence is not your path to take, carnage follows in your wake. If an end is what you desire, close your eyes – embrace my fire._

Jason laughs until his throat is raw. When he can breathe again, he begins the arduous hike back to the nearest town. He cannot – will not – embrace Etrigan. But the demon is right. This is not an end to their curse, merely a weak attempt at hiding from it.


	4. london

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter I had already written. Further updates will be sporadic at best. Hope you've enjoyed the ride so far. :)

Empires fall, and rise. The ocean, once so treacherous, is tamed just in time for colonization. Swords are hung up in favour of the increasingly reliable gun. Jason o' the Blood becomes Jason Blood. The world has changed, but not enough.

The industrial revolution brings with it torrents of smoke, and the constant grinding of gears sets his teeth on edge. A haze of human misery settles over the cities, so thick as to be nearly tangible, while the countryside shrinks. Aristocracy clashes with new money, class wars beginning in earnest even as wealthy children are beaten and poor children killed. Londinium becomes London, and London rots. Etrigan savors every polluted breath, and Jason finds himself doing the same. 

Once upon a time, a knight swore himself to a king, to uphold Arthur's ideals and fight back the monsters that would swallow humanity's future. The days of knights are over, but the monsters remain. They are fire and brimstone and low, grating rhymes. They are the cruel gears that crush workers in the factories. They are shadows lurking in the night, taking out their brutal lusts on the lost and vulnerable. No longer the outsider, the intruder, the invader, they have become the very fabric of this new world. Alone, Jason could do nothing.

But Jason hasn't been alone for centuries.

Jack the Ripper kills five women before they track him down. Taunts and flames flow freely from Etrigan's tongue, but Jason's blade ends the hunt. It's not the first time he's enjoyed killing. It is, however, the first time he admits it to either of them. There is a certain satisfaction in removing a threat, avenging a wrong, destroying something monstrous, but that is not what Jason feels as he watches a crimson tide spread across the cobbles.

_A job well done,_ Etrigan purrs. _Find another one._

They do.


	5. witch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is horrendously OOC because Etrigan shuts up for once.

Witches, in Jason's experience, come in two varieties: eccentric and helpful or eccentric and cruel. It's often hard to tell them apart until it's too late to escape. This one seemed to be the former until he got Jason alone at his estate. Then he revealed his true face – in an unfortunately literal manner – and activated a number of nasty spells around the perimeter, trapping them both inside. Jason hadn't noticed any of them coming in. He must be losing his touch.

“Now, you and the demon shall both belong to me!”

The witch is still laughing victoriously when Jason's blade takes off his head. It bounces, once, twice, then rolls to a stop. He waits for a second, sword at the ready, to make sure the witch is truly dead. Then he sheathes the weapon with dark satisfaction, echoed and magnified by the shadow that lurks in his head.

He expects a taunt about his trusting idiocy, another awful rhyme about his failings, but Etrigan does not speak. He simply watches, the weight of him heavy inside Jason's skull, as the knight kneels down to examine the spells encircling them. 

Bloody hell. How did Jason miss this? It's going to take him a week to unravel this mess. He may not have a week before one of the witch's acquaintances drops by and finds him dead. And most of the man's circle were of similarly sorcerous tendency – and, one must presume, similar levels of ill-intent.

In that moment, he wants nothing more than to let his own skin peel back and unleash the demon. Instead, he sets his jaw and begins the arduous task of picking the magics apart.

For once, Etrigan looks on in silence.


End file.
